1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a speech signal processing, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for detecting speech segments.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is very important to accurately detect speech segments of speech signals in technical fields related to speech signal processing, such as speech analysis and synthesis, speech recognition, speech coding and speech encoding. However, a typical related art detector for detecting speech segments has a complicated configuration, requires large amounts of calculation and cannot perform real time processing.
Typical related art speech segment detection methods include, for example, an energy and zero crossing rate detection method, a method for determining the presence of a speech signal by obtaining a cepstral coefficient of a segment identified by name and a cepstral distance of a current segment, and a method for determining the presence of a speech signal by measuring coherence between two voice signals and noise. Such speech segment detection methods are problematic in that their performance with regard to detecting speech segments are not outstanding in actual applications, the device configuration is complicated, it is difficult to apply the methods if a SNR (signal to noise ratio) is low, and it is difficult to detect speech segments if background noise detected through a peripheral environment abruptly changes.
Consequently, in technical fields for which speech signal processing is applied, such as a communication system, a mobile communication system and a speech recognition system, there is a need for a speech segment detection method for which the performance with regard to voice segment detection is outstanding even under circumstances where background noise abruptly changes, the amount of calculation required for speech segment detection is small, and real time processing is facilitated. The present invention addresses these and other needs.